A competitor research brief that helps you choose a next move

Define the customer choice you are competing for

A useful brief starts with the situation in which a customer chooses between alternatives. Those alternatives can include an incumbent, a spreadsheet, a service provider or doing nothing. Listing companies that use the same category label can miss the actual competition.

Choose a decision the brief must support: which segment to pursue, which capability to build, how to explain a difference, or whether to enter a new channel. Keep the scope narrow enough that the research can change an action. State what is outside the brief, including markets or customer groups you have not examined.

Use a claim ledger rather than a feature scoreboard

For each alternative, capture the promised outcome, intended customer, route to purchase, visible constraints and source date. Label statements as directly observed, company-reported or inferred. An advertised capability is not evidence of frequent use, and a public price does not establish the amount a particular customer pays.

Preserve the exact comparison basis. If one offer bundles implementation and another charges for it separately, a headline price comparison can mislead. When documentation is unclear, record the uncertainty and the question you would need to answer. Do not silently give an unknown feature a zero.

Add cases that explain strategic choices

Cases can help you explore why a company narrowed its product, changed distribution or served a different customer. They complement current product research; they do not replace it. A historical case should have an event date and a note about what may have changed since.

Write a hypothesis for each apparent advantage. “This product wins because it has more features” is difficult to test. “The buyer avoids a separate implementation project” points to a concrete adoption mechanism. Look for counterexamples: when did a broader offer add complexity, or a narrower offer fail to meet a necessary workflow?

Deliver one decision page and an evidence appendix

The decision page should contain the customer situation, the closest alternatives, two or three meaningful trade-offs and a recommended next investigation or move. Put detailed feature observations and sources in the appendix. This lets a colleague challenge the reasoning without having to reconstruct your research.

A hypothetical team choosing its first integration might find that purchase approval, rather than feature coverage, is the limiting factor. It could investigate security-review effort before expanding the roadmap. This is an example of a possible inference, not a claim about any named competitor. Refresh the brief when the decision or the underlying offers change.

Use this worksheet for your decision

Copy this into your notes. Leave unknowns visible instead of filling gaps with guesses.

Decision to support:
Customer situation:
Alternatives, including doing nothing:
Claim / evidence / date / uncertainty:
Purchase and adoption constraints:
Most important trade-offs:
Historical case and relevance limit:
Recommended next move:
Evidence that would change it:

Find evidence in the archives

Choose a supporting case and a counterexample with a different outcome. Read their sources and check whether their conditions match yours.

• change.archi
• startups.center

Cases to practice with (read and check the underlying sources):

• Publicis's data-led Power of One turnaround made it the world's largest ad group
• Piramal Finance's retail pivot left legacy loans under 2% of AUM and lifted margins